Wednesdays’ evening is taken in Hargeisa! It is a day reserved for Academic Dialog In Hargeisa (ADIH) event at Hargeisa Cultural Center. The event aims to assist in the production of knowledge in the field of Somali studies, also to act as a network for student and scholars during fieldwork in Hargeisa. Similarly, ADIH aims to help scholars gain a better, more nuanced understanding of Somaliland as a subject of study whilst exposing students to a wealth of locally produced knowledge. The idea of the “PhD Days at HCC” on Somali related issues is also to prepare people for the 40th anniversary of the Somali Studies International Congress which, is due to take place in Hargeisa in July 2018. So far, we have had 16 PhD level presentations in wide range of areas ranging from politics, economics, linguistics to natural resource utilization by scholars and PhD students who came from universities in different corners of the world.

The event has a special arrangement of presentation where by discussion rather than a hot spot questioning is used on a moon light open space with in the Hargeisa Cultural Center that has an inspiring environment. Participants take ownership in receiving information, sharing their thoughts in a constructive suggestive manner and assist each other in gaining new perspectives that helps at the end to come to common ground with each presentation issues. Only one rule applies here “introduce yourself before you provide your comments “which is aimed at connecting and advancing the bond of knowing each other for more relaxed communication.

Our last three presentations also evolved with similar tone but even got a wider reception owing it to the fact that they were part of the historic, successful and democratic election Somaliland had. All the three presenters were part of the International Election Observation mission as a Sort term observer. First, we had Dr. Scott Pegg Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His presentation on ‘Twenty Years of De Facto State Studies: Progress, Problems and Prospects’ surfaced issues centering on the struggle for self-determination with in the past 20 years research including Somaliland whereby he stated that the challenge remains constant starting from naming such entities, irregularities in international principles and limitation on new perspective of academic dialog on the area. He further asserted that fundamentally there remains a continued failure to reach agreement on the number of these entities that exist or have existed since 1945. The nuanced and empirically rich academic literature has also largely failed to advance journalists or policymakers’ understanding of de facto states. Yet, the prospects for de facto state studies remain bright. More diverse comparative work, renewed attention to how engagement without recognition might facilitate the participation of unrecognized entities in international politics, a renewed focus on parent state strategies, and increased attention to de facto states and conflict resolution are areas deserving of greater scholarly attention was the pillar point he wanted to pass. Recent developments from Catalonia to Somaliland were discussed with in this presentation framework which lead to heated, informative and interesting dialog night.

With the well ignited appetite by Dr. Pegg’s presentation, we had our following Wednesday dialog with the young scholar Mr.Yusuf Serunkuma who is a PhD student at Makerere University Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University in Kampala. His work focuses on exploiting the craft and aesthetics of popular culture (poetry, nationalist music, monuments, popular narratives and practices, national celebrations, fliers and symbols of statehood such as the national flag, and recent ethnography, 2015) mostly through ethnography, discourse and literary analysis, Yusuf’s work examines the ways in which Somaliland political identity and national consciousness is mobilized as an independent nation state seceding from Somalia. Using the case study of Somaliland, as a form of de-imagined nationalism, Yusuf then attempts to theorize secessionist nationalism (Eritrea, South Sudan, Pakistan, Biafra, Catalonia, Scotland etc.) as it is distinctly different from other forms of nationalism especially anticolonial nationalism. Participants were impressed with the diverging perspective he was trying to illustrate how identity depiction matters by negating the traditional ‘I am this because I am not that’ which he said unless aspiring nations start centering their self-determination in a way that starts and ends in what they are, he said will still be in a continuous challenge of waiting. In his explanation he stated that in Somaliland’s nationalist project he has two arguments: Firstly, he presents that through its “officially sponsored” popular cultural items (such as the symbols of statehood, monuments, nationalist music and poetry, select events such as the arrest of the Horn Stars returning from Mogadishu in 2015 etc.), Somaliland has constructed a public identity that thrives on an intimate juxtaposition/foil with Somalia. He argues that is perilous as there is potential for nationalist amnesia/violence once the foil disappears. Secondly, that although most of scholarship rightly celebrates the peace and stability in the country of the last 26 years, sustaining the images and histories of violence in its public identity and institutional symbolisms suggests it has remained a country at war. He asserted that Somaliland ought to build a national consciousness without Somalia as its referent. “my suggestions include monumentalizing cultural and SNM heroes, first presidents, significant historical figures etc.” Secondly, by defining itself in essentially internationalist terms (democrats, anti-terrorism, victims of a genocide), Somaliland surrenders both the power to define itself in its own terms (say, cultural-traditional) to the international regime of power, which defines those terms. As well, this has potential to plunge the country into cultural/nationalist amnesia once the terms of the debate shift. On the bases of this presentation participants provided pro and critics by giving example of struggle all over the world which lighted up the discussion. Among the core comments were the international principle of state recognition being binding to have a referent state be it as a mother state or patron which are central in the self-determination process. well his argument popular culture shall be used to identify what Somaliland is as it stands on its own description was concluded with a performance by HCC Cultural Dance team that played ‘Hobbay’.

As the forum is centering Somaliland/Somalia based research with internationally acknowledged methodology and research practice, the three presentations we had resonated on Somaliland statehood and mechanisms for development that coincided with the election the state was on. The third presentation was by Miss Amanda Møller Rasmussen who has a background in Social Anthropology of Development (MA) from the School of Oriental and African Studies as well as in African Studies (MA) from the University of Copenhagen. She has been affiliated to the Centre of African Studies at Copenhagen University as a research assistant and project coordinator. Her research has mainly focused on Somaliland’s fishery sector and its development initiatives, exploring the various economic, social and epistemic networks that surround Somaliland’s fishery development on both a local and global level. During her presentation she stated that although fisheries in Somaliland have seldom caught the attention of scholars or international actors, the successful articulation of a linkage between “Somali piracy” and regional fisheries have led to more and more development attention, resources and technologies targeted at the Somaliland fishery industry. She argues that this has resulted in linking both local and global actors in an effort to securitize the region. Her presentation reflected more upon how these narratives are used to address issues of poverty and fishery development. At the same time, she investigates how these narratives have made the Somaliland fishery industry – a marginal and often unnoticed industry with little influence on the global community – into an arena from where different local and global actors are able to negotiate their interest, positions, and the allocation of development resources in a globalized world. In such a process establishing, appropriating, and re-establishing ideas about potential dangerous fishermen and the legitimacy of international development by linking up to local desires, global agendas, and the development epistemic communities that surrounds fishery development in Somaliland is mandatory was her point to take from the presentation. As always her presentation was also followed by supplementing perspectives and challenges that shadowed fishery which is an industry Somaliland has a wider opportunity for national development.

Well this is ADIH November with Wednesdays’ well spent, academic environment celebrated and the waiting for the next PhD presentation taking over as the last Wednesdays of each month are dedicated to a documentary featuring night that brings the public together to give the dialog another emerging dimension of academic discussion with socially significant documentaries. This week we are screening ‘Cultures of Resistance’ directed by Iara Lee to lead the way for another intellectual dialog and say goodbye to November a month that once again placed Somaliland back on top of democratic practice success story in Horn of Africa a region dominated by fear after election season.

Ideas do not belong to anyone. They help society to grow up collectively as well as individually, and every member of the society needs them. HargeysaIdeas is series of cultural study publications, based on analysis and views expressed by one of the Hargeysa International Book Fair guest artists in each year. Each issue is initially formalized as a live conversation, with the possibility to have question and answers session that involves the public; and in a subsequent moment the guest artist, with the editor, expands the conversation with possible additional questions.

This year the HIBF had as prominent guest Nuruddin Farah, one of the most important African writers and the author of 14 books, amongst them FromaCrookedRib;TheNakedNeedle;YesterdayandTomorrow;Territories; the trilogy: SweetandSourMilk, Sardines and CloseSesame; the trilogy: Maps, Gifts and Secrets; the trilogy: Links, Knots and Crossbones, etc. Born in Somalia, he grew up in the Somali-speaking region of Ethiopia, studied in India and the UK, and has long been residing in exile. Now based in South Africa he teaches in the States and travels extensively during the year.

Jama Musse Jama: Nuruddin is here as a guest for the 7th Hargeysa International Book Fair. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Let us start with the Book Fair. This is the first time you join us for the fair. What did you expect to see in Hargeysa and what, after a week-long programme of events, have you observed?

Nuruddin Farah: I expected to find at the book fair a large number of books published from outside the country and was pleased to see that there have been attempts to publish texts written in Somali. Above all, I was highly impressed with the quality of the books published by your outfit Redsea.

JMJ: The imagination was the theme of this year’s festival, which allowed several different people to address the topic from a variety of perspectives. We also struggled initially to agree on how to translate the word ‘imagination’ into Somali : mala’awaal,khayaalfrom the Arabic, suurayn, etc. Would you like to say something about the theme?

NF: I was very delighted to listen to the ongoing debate between the speakers as to what Imagination meant to them, especially the poems authored by the young men and women who participated from the floor.

JMJ: This year Malawi featured as the Guest Country of the year. We hosted the outstanding Professor Mapanje and Dr. Msiska amongst others. Next year we will be inviting Nigeria as our Guest Country. We insist on hosting an African country as our guest also because we want to open ‘a window’ of communication between young Somalilanders and African cultures and literature. What do you think about promoting cultural ties across Africa as well as with Europe (through the diaspora) and the Gulf of Arabia (due to its geographical proximity)?

NF: I would prefer more close contact with Africa, less with Arabia. Personally I feel much closer intellectually and geographically with our continent and was delighted to see the participation of several of my Malawian friends at the Book Fair.

JMJ: Hargeysa International Book Fair is becoming a truly international event which takes place in a peaceful corner of a troubled region. You met with several friends such as Jon Lee Anderson, brilliant young writers like Nadifa Mahamed and many others, and they were keen to meet and converse with you in Hargeysa. What message about Somali culture do you expect these authors, journalists, thinkers and artists to convoy to their respective communities?

NF: I believe they arrived with little knowledge about the Somali-speaking world and they left with a better understanding of our culture and our worldview.

JMJ: Throughout your stay in Hargeysa for the Book Fair, you also had the opportunity to visit the decorated shelters of the Laas Geel caves. What impressed you about these cultural sites?

NF: I was moved to see the figurines and felt more convinced than before that we, Somalis, have our way of worship, our way of looking at the world long before Islam arrived in our land. And I hope that we will know more about the origins of these shelters and the reasons why they were created in a future to come.

JMJ: Culture shapes individuals’ worldviews and the ways in which communities address the changes and challenges faced by their societies. To what extent do you think culture has become a priority in Africa and in Somaliland?

NF: Culture tends to bring peoples closer and has also the tendency to create changes in the way we perceive ourselves. It was moving to note how much the Book Fair meant to the residents in this city.

JMJ: The connections between culture, art and development have been increasingly recognized at an international level. For example, UNESCO is deploying an agenda of mainstreaming culture into development, and aims to introduce culture as a priority in a post-2015 UN Development Agenda. Do you think there is an opportunity for culture to take center stage in Somaliland?

NF: It’s been my belief that only by giving more priority to creating written culture, recording our oral literature and by committing more of our efforts to promote the written tradition that we will achieve more developments both in our daily lives as well as in our national cultures. The debate has begun here at the Book Fair and I am pleased to have been a participant in it.

JMJ: A mainstream understanding is that ‘culture is a vector of socio-economic development,’ and a potential for boosting socio-economic growth and employment through cultural industries. Do you see any tangible contributions that can be gained through promoting culture and heritage in the Somaliland economy and the country’s development?

NF: A lot needs to be done for us to promote the healthier aspects of our culture and to exploit the potential that is there.

JMJ: A second interpretation of the relationship between culture and development is to consider culture as “capacity to inspire”, to develop a decent human being, and to produce sustainable wealth in a process which is “based on heritage, diversity, creativity and the transmission of knowledge” that relate culture to all dimensions of sustainable development. Are we distracted by the globalization in producing profit at all costs, from humanizing the development and focusing on the individual?

NF: Culture, when approached with a more progressive secularity serves as a well-rounded, less limited and less limiting way and not when we approach it from a narrow-minded, constrictive manner.

JMJ: Let’s return to discussing Nuruddin as a writer. You are now living almost permanently in Cape Town, in your apartment, which I imagine is in a silent and comfortable place which gives you time to think and write. What is Nuruddin’s standard daily routine in South Africa? When does Nuruddin Farah write for instance?

NF: If and when possible, I write daily from 9am to 5pm. Sadly, there are continuous interruptions, in that I travel a great deal, away from my comfort zone. But at least I would like to make sure that I spend about six months a year doing the writing in Cape Town

JMJ: I do not want to go back to the same question about why you do not write in Somali. But you are probably well aware that some people criticize the fact that your writings, and the characters and the places that you mention in your books have Somali names, but are not Somali in spirit and do not reflect the ways Somalis behave. They claim that your characters portray a Western style of life in a Somali context. What is your response to that?

NF: My response is that most of the Somalis who criticize me have seldom read any of my books, because those who do read them, are more kind to my efforts at writing.

JMJ: Is there a specific target audience, or readership in your writings?

NF: Every one of my novel has ‘found’ its own audience and I am pleased to say that there are some readers, foreigners and Somalis who admire them even more than I do.

JMJ: Your books have been translated into a dozen languages, with the exception of Somali. Would you like to see your novels read in Somali? Are there any plans to do so? Is anyone working on it?

NF: I would very much love to see several of my novels translated into Somali and I hope that Redsea/Kayd will make this happen.

JMJ: I heard a friend of mine who said that when Nuruddin’s writings first came out, people who did not know about him, confused whether the narrator ‘I’ of the story was in fact a women. Where did you gain this sensibility to women’s issues in your early writings?

NF: In truth, the story on which I based FROM A CROOKED RIB is the story of many Somali women and as a matter of fact I even met a woman who claimed that since the story was hers, perhaps I should consider sharing the royalty with her.

JMJ: You are identified as the first writer to break with the Somali oral tradition. Now, Somali literature is in a transition period, shifting from orality to the written word. What are we losing, and what are we are gaining?

NF: The way I see it: I am forever indebted to the Somali oral tradition, which I employ to prop up my writing, assist me in my self-identification with being a Somali. Much of my writing, as a matter of principle, is informed by my borrowing from the Somali oral tradition, despite acknowledging that, as things stand, the Somali oral literature will remain the poor cousin to the written tradition until we organize the recording and dissemination of it via the technological media that are available to us. Even so, with every gain, there is a loss that comes with it. However, in order not to lose much, we must commit ourselves to recording our oral traditions in order to make the transition work to our advantage.

JMJ: I know you do not sympathize with the oral culture and you chose a long time ago to move to the written. On the other hand, Somali oral literature, mainly poetry, is not only rich but also very sophisticated (for instance the scansion system). Are there elements of this oral tradition that need to be preserved at any costs?

NF: It is unfair to accuse me of “not sympathizing” with oral culture. Rather, I do wish to romanticize it.

JMJ: But I heard you labelling the oral literature as the poor cousin of the written literature. Why do you consider it as such?

NF: Because there is something terribly “primitive” about oral culture – and for it to reach more people or even to survive, it cannot do so without technology.

JMJ: Now, on another perspective: is there a specific form of literature that one can call African Literature?

NF: My feeling is that any text written with informed African sensibility belongs to African literature. Africa is a multilingual, multicultural continent and in my discussions I insist that North African literature, whether written in Arabic or French is as an integral part of the continent’s literature as the texts produced white South Africans or other African nationals from the continent’s South of the Sahara.

JMJ: Most of the contemporary African writers are in some way formed and shaped in and by the

West. Can we still call them African writers?

NF: We do and we can and we must. As long as they think of themselves as Africans and their writings as part of the continent’s literary production. I tend to take an inclusive stance and am not enamored of the exclusive tendencies shown by narrow-minded literary critics.

JMJ: Africa is not a country. There are 54 different states, 3000 different languages, … why is there an obsession to talk about Africa as a uniformed society? What do all these countries have in common?

NF: These countries share an African sensibility not found elsewhere. Of course, there are differences among the separate regions of the continent, just as there are differences, say, between Sicily and Sweden on the one hand and England and Italy on the other.

JMJ: In a session of HIBF2014 on “How to write about Africa” you blamed the African writers for not writing enough on Africa. Did you intend the quality of African writing not being developed enough in such a manner to influence the world and change the opinion on Africa, or it is (also) for matter of quantity? We write less than others….

NF: We in Africa produce less writing of exceptional quality than any other continent. That is for sure.

JMJ: You just finished your new book, which will be launched in two months of time. Can you tell us anything about it? At least the title?

NF: The new novel, which is the first part of a new trilogy, is called HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.

JMJ: Are you working on a new project?

NF: I am currently at work on the second part of the new trilogy.

JMJ: Are you coming back for the next HIBF? We would love it!

NF: I hope to return when Redsea Culture Foundation publishes the translation, into Somali, of my first novel.

Djibouti Delegation led by the President of the University of Djibouti, Dr. Djama Mohamed Hassan, and Advisor of the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Fahmi Ahmed Mohamed, and Mousse Khayre Soubagle of UD, accompanied by top management of the University of Hargeysa paid courtesy visit at the Hargeysa Cultural Centre.

Tartanka "Sheeko & Shaahid"

During this presentation our academic dissuasion was guided by a project work that focuses on one of the academic success stories from Somaliland; Abaarso Tech school. Mr. Harry Lee an American Filmmaker who is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Education at Harvard University. He has spent three years in Somaliland teaching at Abaarso School and shared with us his findings on challenges and opportunities for the students to join the highly reputed institutions in the West.

The feature-length documentary which he made with his partners Ben Powell and Kate Griendling, about five Abaarso students who are applying to American schools with a lot of collective dreams and expectations on their shoulders set the discussion on multiple direction including appreciation for of artistic presentation of significant stories that shapes westerns understanding of developing nation. It was also used as a way to reflect the need to come up with a well-researched achievement stories that can inspire young Somalilanders through the voice of youth they related too.

The story detail follows Abdisamad, Roda, and Amaal who are students at Abaarso School of Science and Technology outside Hargeisa. Abaarso is an American-run school where Somaliland students attempt to secure scholarships to US universities so they can be better prepared to lead their country. Each of these three students has different motivations and dreams while at Abaarso. The odds are stacked against them as they apply to American schools but they hold out hope for a better future.

Conclusion

As it has become a prominent space for academic discussion, this forum has grown in number of area covered and attendants. Even though its weekly based aspiration is challenged with the fact that it is not possible to have PhD presentation every week, expanding its domain by having presentations of related published articles, masters research works that have strong relation to a project in the PhD level has gave the chance to hold the sessions on consistent base.

The range of participant is still mainly PhD students but once in a while when we have international scholars who could be benefit not only to the PhD circle but the overall academic development in Somaliland so as to make sure appropriate information collection strategies and locations are used for research which usually puts a question on how international researcher get local context in an objective manner directs our decision to incorporate such studies. this is well assured by making such presentation a public event in comparison to the closed PhD days presentations in order to reach every interested academic community member to takes part in it. the practice of making it a public event also is applied to presentations of internationally renowned scholars whose experience is significant to the wider community. The case of Dr. Severine Autesserre Dr. Michael Walls and Dr. Scot Pegg’s presentation nights are worth mentioning here.

The growing number of attendants and mailing list members is another encouraging fact that tells how much the forum is attaining its objective of identifying research works on progress, connecting researches, sharing experience and developing collective responsibility of assuring quality research works practice are utilized in researching socially significant matters. On an average we have had 245 participants with local and international mix with young Somalilanders taking the higher portion for attending most of the presentation even though our November presentations brought more of international participant due to the election observation mission for the presidential election. The gender balance seems to be more of male dominant both in number of researches presented and also attendants for the events which we hope will have a different future turn out.

All in all, the forum is going in the right direction which will yield the aspired input for the 40th Somali Studies international congress.

“Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara’ directed by Iara Lee

We screened ‘Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara’ directed by Iara Lee to lead the way for another intellectual dialog.
Four decades after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, the Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony. While a UN-brokered ceasefire put an end to armed hostilities in the territory in 1991, the Sahrawi people have continued to live under the Moroccan armed forces’ oppressive occupation, and what peace exists in the area is fragile at best. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis have fled to neighboring Algeria, where over 125,000 refugees still live in camps that were intended to be temporary. In spite of these difficulties, a new movement, with youth at its center, is rising to challenge human rights abuses and to demand the long-promised referendum on freedom. Today’s young generation is deploying creative nonviolent resistance for the cause of self-determination. In doing so, they’ve had to persevere against a torrent of conflicting forces. While risking torture and disappearance at the hands of Moroccan authorities, they’re also pushing back against those who have lost patience with the international community and are ready to launch another guerrilla war. The new film from director Iara Lee will examine these tensions as it chronicles the everyday violence of life under occupation, giving voice to the aspirations of a desert people for whom colonialism has never ended.

Somaliland’s fishery sector and its development initiatives, exploring the various economic, social and epistemic networks

As the forum is centering Somaliland/Somalia based research with internationally acknowledged methodology and research practice, the three presentations we had resonated on Somaliland statehood and mechanisms for development that coincided with the election the state was on. The third presentation was by Miss Amanda Møller Rasmussen who has a background in Social Anthropology of Development (MA) from the School of Oriental and African Studies as well as in African Studies (MA) from the University of Copenhagen. She has been affiliated to the Centre of African Studies at Copenhagen University as a research assistant and project coordinator. Her research has mainly focused on Somaliland’s fishery sector and its development initiatives, exploring the various economic, social and epistemic networks that surround Somaliland’s fishery development on both a local and global level. During her presentation she stated that although fisheries in Somaliland have seldom caught the attention of scholars or international actors, the successful articulation of a linkage between “Somali piracy” and regional fisheries have led to more and more development attention, resources and technologies targeted at the Somaliland fishery industry. She argues that this has resulted in linking both local and global actors in an effort to securitize the region. Her presentation reflected more upon how these narratives are used to address issues of poverty and fishery development. At the same time, she investigates how these narratives have made the Somaliland fishery industry – a marginal and often unnoticed industry with little influence on the global community – into an arena from where different local and global actors are able to negotiate their interest, positions, and the allocation of development resources in a globalized world. In such a process establishing, appropriating, and re-establishing ideas about potential dangerous fishermen and the legitimacy of international development by linking up to local desires, global agendas, and the development epistemic communities that surrounds fishery development in Somaliland is mandatory was her point to take from the presentation. As always her presentation was also followed by supplementing perspectives and challenges that shadowed fishery which is an industry Somaliland has a wider opportunity for national development.

With the well ignited appetite by Dr. Pegg’s presentation, we had our following Wednesday dialog with the young scholar Mr.Yusuf Serunkuma who is a PhD student at Makerere University Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University in Kampala. His work focuses on exploiting the craft and aesthetics of popular culture (poetry, nationalist music, monuments, popular narratives and practices, national celebrations, fliers and symbols of statehood such as the national flag, and recent ethnography, 2015) mostly through ethnography, discourse and literary analysis, Yusuf’s work examines the ways in which Somaliland political identity and national consciousness is mobilized as an independent nation state seceding from Somalia. Using the case study of Somaliland, as a form of de-imagined nationalism, Yusuf then attempts to theorize secessionist nationalism (Eritrea, South Sudan, Pakistan, Biafra, Catalonia, Scotland etc.) as it is distinctly different from other forms of nationalism especially anticolonial nationalism. Participants were impressed with the diverging perspective he was trying to illustrate how identity depiction matters by negating the traditional ‘I am this because I am not that’ which he said unless aspiring nations start centering their self-determination in a way that starts and ends in what they are, he said will still be in a continuous challenge of waiting. In his explanation he stated that in Somaliland’s nationalist project he has two arguments: Firstly, he presents that through its “officially sponsored” popular cultural items (such as the symbols of statehood, monuments, nationalist music and poetry, select events such as the arrest of the Horn Stars returning from Mogadishu in 2015 etc.), Somaliland has constructed a public identity that thrives on an intimate juxtaposition/foil with Somalia. He argues that is perilous as there is potential for nationalist amnesia/violence once the foil disappears. Secondly, that although most of scholarship rightly celebrates the peace and stability in the country of the last 26 years, sustaining the images and histories of violence in its public identity and institutional symbolisms suggests it has remained a country at war. He asserted that Somaliland ought to build a national consciousness without Somalia as its referent. “my suggestions include monumentalizing cultural and SNM heroes, first presidents, significant historical figures etc.” Secondly, by defining itself in essentially internationalist terms (democrats, anti-terrorism, victims of a genocide), Somaliland surrenders both the power to define itself in its own terms (say, cultural-traditional) to the international regime of power, which defines those terms. As well, this has potential to plunge the country into cultural/nationalist amnesia once the terms of the debate shift. On the bases of this presentation participants provided pro and critics by giving example of struggle all over the world which lighted up the discussion. Among the core comments were the international principle of state recognition being binding to have a referent state be it as a mother state or patron which are central in the self-determination process. well his argument popular culture shall be used to identify what Somaliland is as it stands on its own description was concluded with a performance by HCC Cultural Dance team that played ‘Hobbay’.

Our last three presentations also evolved with similar tone but even got a wider reception owing it to the fact that they were part of the historic, successful and democratic election Somaliland had. All the three presenters were part of the International Election Observation mission as a Sort term observer. First, we had Dr. Scott Pegg Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His presentation on ‘Twenty Years of De Facto State Studies: Progress, Problems and Prospects’ surfaced issues centering on the struggle for self-determination with in the past 20 years research including Somaliland whereby he stated that the challenge remains constant starting from naming such entities, irregularities in international principles and limitation on new perspective of academic dialog on the area. He further asserted that fundamentally there remains a continued failure to reach agreement on the number of these entities that exist or have existed since 1945. The nuanced and empirically rich academic literature has also largely failed to advance journalists or policymakers’ understanding of de facto states. Yet, the prospects for de facto state studies remain bright. More diverse comparative work, renewed attention to how engagement without recognition might facilitate the participation of unrecognized entities in international politics, a renewed focus on parent state strategies, and increased attention to de facto states and conflict resolution are areas deserving of greater scholarly attention was the pillar point he wanted to pass. Recent developments from Catalonia to Somaliland were discussed with in this presentation framework which lead to heated, informative and interesting dialog night.

A Somali Nation-State: History, culture and Somaliland’s political transition

The presentation by Dr. Michael Walls was another critical presentation we had in developing academic space for research and knowledge transfer in Hargeyisa Somaliland. Michael Walls (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at UCL’s Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), and for the past fourteen years, his research has focused on the political economy of the Somali Horn of Africa, including the evolving political settlement in Somaliland. He has also been a part of the coordination team for international election observations in Somaliland in 2005, 2010 and 2012 as well as the 2016/17 Voter Registration process, and was Principal Investigator for the ESRC-funded research project ‘Political Settlement in Somaliland: a gendered perspective’. Michael is currently heading the international Election Observation Mission for Somaliland’s 2017 presidential election.

Summary of Presentation

Somaliland is attracting increasing attention for its stability and the cycle of elections that has taken place since a constitution was formally adopted by referendum in 2001. This event will consider research conducted by Michael Walls, culminating in the book ‘A Somali Nation-State: History, culture and Somaliland’s political transition’. In that publication, Walls argues that, rather than undergoing a process of what is frequently described as ‘democratization’, Somaliland can more accurately be seen as negotiating the difficult transition from a discursive system of extreme democracy to a representative one more suitable for nation-state governance. That transition has proven difficult in other societies that have experienced it, and many of Somaliland’s own challenges can be better understood from that perspective than the one provided by more common narratives.

Walls’ own research on this has spanned almost a decade and a half, and in the early days took a constructivist approach, with consequent impact on the methodologies employed. Relying heavily on qualitative and interview-based methods, the research relied on triangulated narratives to build a picture of the understandings of participants as to the processes that have supported Somaliland’s transition. This session will consider both methodological approaches and the findings of that research.

Participant of this presentation stressed the relevance of such spaces specially with well experienced presenters like him as it has helped attendants from all domains of research and academic space. The PhD researchers who are in their data collection, analysis and presentation have got the experience shared from his activities and young attendants who haven’t started their research even were benefited from process of topic selection, framing, scoping and methodologies as a way of assuring objectives attainment for their academic inquiry.

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About

The Hargeysa Cultural Center was opened in August 2014 in Hargeysa, Somaliland. The Center was established by Redsea Cultural Foundation (RCF). Since its establishment, the Hargeysa Cultural Center has become an important feature in Hargeysa’s cultural landscape. The success of the center owes much to the respect that RCF has gained from its work on running the annual Hargeysa International Book Fair, which, now in its eighth year, has become one of the most admired cultural events in the region.